A series of essays and reflections. I try to write at least once and sometimes more each week. Opposing views are most welcome. This is a marketplace of ideas blog.

11 October 2011

A Parable Considered

On her blog, An Inch at a Time, Rev. Susan Russell has done an interesting contrast between two persons and two views of the church. I offered this comment, which I think has some value in its own right and so have cross-posted it here:

I read your post thinking about last Sunday's RCL Gospel. Consider this as a story outline:

The king invites the good people, who are not interested.

The king brings all the ruffians in, you know the sort of people Bp. Lawrence wants outside.

Most of them manage quite well.

When he finds the one exception he has him removed.

So, if as is sort of a standard interpretive framework, we suggest that Jesus intended us to see the king as the Father, where are we? God, you know, that guy +Lawrence claims to serve, invited, indeed commanded, "indiscriminate inclusivity." He found one bad actor, and had him removed. He sorted them out, AFTER he included them.

Which is precisely what +Lawrence misses. God is indiscriminately inclusive. Yes, as God did in the parable, we may include someone who refuses to act as though he is in the kingdom once included.

Let me see, we have one bishop who refuses to be loyal, inclusive (as we just said God is) and act like an Episcopalian bishop. In short we can suggest he is not "wearing the wedding robe (vestment)" as expected and promised. Now how was that one treated? Hmmm....

5 comments:

So jim, are you a homosexual? Even though you have made a reference to a wife in past posts, I notice all the rainbow motifs on your blog and the rabid pro-homosexual rhetoric you engage in. In my experience no heterosexual behaves this way. Have you decided to break your vows to your wife and "live into" whatever sexual desires pop up into your head, since you value those urges more than a covenant relationship with the woman you vowed to spend your life with?

Anonymous, your question comes very close to the edge of my rules. But, in charity, I shall answer it. No, I am not, nor am I bi-sexual. A good gay friend once refereed to me as, "heartrendingly straight." Another pointed out that no one who knew my "taste" in clothes would ever think me gay. ;-)

You write, "In my experience no heterosexual behaves this way." Really? You need to get out more! I would guess that I know dozens of straight ( I never ask anyone) people who are at least as involved in the conversation as I.

Let me tell you about experience. I can recall being told that I was the only, "pro gay" (I am not sure what that means) member of the parish. Two members joined me, and my wife, in picketing ABp Akinola when he came here. The person knew both of those people, and two serving clerics whom he thought, wrongly, straight. But he did not see them for themselves.

Part of that was his aggressive anti-gay-rights attitude did not invite them to share themselves. Part of it was his assumptions about "normal."

I apologize. Thank you for answering. It just concerns me when people are so activist for something in which they have a direct interest, like when Michael J Fox supports embryonic stem cell research (destroying embryos even though these have not yielded anywhere near the results of adult stem cells).

Your apology was gracious and unnecessary. I do completely accept it in any case.

I do not have any direct interest except one, I really do believe that denying justice to one person or class has the effect of denying it for all. I am passionate about the status of my lbgt friends not because of my sex life but because their struggle is all of ours. Justice does not subdivide worth a damn.

Actually, I think if you look at the complete body of work I have published here and at Comprehensive Unity where I help maintain the blog I helped build, I think you will see that my interest in polity, and consequent opposition to the Covenant is as big a topic as my advocacy of lgbt rights.

But that balance may be changing. You see, the Covenant is a dead letter. It never made sense, and I think the Coalition among others have succeeded in making the case against it. My sense of justice and its outrage at defenders of DOMA etc remains.

We shall see what that does to my balance. Beating an archbishop is easy compared with the fight for lgtb equity.